Home early
I got off from work early today; which is to say that I left after working just a little more than 10 hours, instead of the normal 15 of late. I've been working on a really tough problem, trying to get some hardware working perfectly (because in my line of work, nothing else will do), and the system is being quite uncooperative. After spending many long nights, we had an epiphany and tried something that just seemed so wrong. I mean, who implements a ring buffer in hardware, but then waits for an interrupt to be serviced before looping around the ring? I mean really? What's the point in having a ring buffer if you're going to stop at the "end" of it? It's a ring buffer! It doesn't have an end! That's why it's a ring! Someone needs to be taken out behind the wood shed and given a what for.
So. There was much rejoicing when we cleared the interrupt flag in the primary interrupt handler (instead of the more delayed secondary interrupt handler) and got much better performance. But, it was short lived. There was much sadness when we realized that there was still some other issue tripping us up. It's probably related, but at this point we have no idea what it could be. And we're tired.
At that point, we threw in the towel and decided that a good night's sleep was what's really required. Oh yeah, that, and a PCI analyzer. We should have both in the morning.
So, I was going to go to bed early tonight, but I bought a copy of Man on Fire on the way home and decided to watch it tonight since I can't seem to be able to fall asleep after having been up late every night for the past month. It's a good movie, though rather violent and a little graphic at times. They use interesting camera angles and cuts to emphasize the emotions and try to give you a "feel" for the characters. Normally I don't like that kind of trickery, but here it worked well (or maybe I'm just too tired to complain). I'm not a fan of the ending though, because I like happy, Hollywood-style endings, and this didn't really have one of them. All in all though, I give it two thumbs up.
So. There was much rejoicing when we cleared the interrupt flag in the primary interrupt handler (instead of the more delayed secondary interrupt handler) and got much better performance. But, it was short lived. There was much sadness when we realized that there was still some other issue tripping us up. It's probably related, but at this point we have no idea what it could be. And we're tired.
At that point, we threw in the towel and decided that a good night's sleep was what's really required. Oh yeah, that, and a PCI analyzer. We should have both in the morning.
So, I was going to go to bed early tonight, but I bought a copy of Man on Fire on the way home and decided to watch it tonight since I can't seem to be able to fall asleep after having been up late every night for the past month. It's a good movie, though rather violent and a little graphic at times. They use interesting camera angles and cuts to emphasize the emotions and try to give you a "feel" for the characters. Normally I don't like that kind of trickery, but here it worked well (or maybe I'm just too tired to complain). I'm not a fan of the ending though, because I like happy, Hollywood-style endings, and this didn't really have one of them. All in all though, I give it two thumbs up.
posted by Mark at 11:27 PM
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